Engineering colleges like Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology, and management institutes such as Indian Institutes of Management, Indian School of Business and XLRI are witnessing strong demand for fresh graduates and post-graduates in the current placement season, and the trend is likely to continue in the upcoming season as well.

Demand for entry-level talent remains mostly unaffected even though lateral hiring remains muted, HR executives said. Most of the new recruits will be trained and deployed in the tech and digital transformation initiatives of companies where they are facing a talent crunch.

Citigroup, Tata Steel, Vedanta, Dabur, Tata Consultancy Services, Schneider Electric, Philips and Whirlpool plan to increase campus hiring or at least keep the numbers steady this year, their executives said. A host of new recruiters are also visiting the campuses. The Punjab and Andhra Pradesh governments were among them at IIM-Ahmedabad, where placements for its one-year management programme has now ended.

“Initial conversations with recruiters tell us that they are looking at continuing or increasing the number of hires from campus. Many of our recruiters are revamping their talent pool and transforming their business models for which they need best talent,” Amit Karna, the head of placements at IIM-Ahmedabad, told ET.

Uber, Flipkart, HSBC, Oyo Hotels & Homes, Godrej and Honeywell were among the new recruiters at IIM-A’s one-year business programme.

‘Techies More in Demand’Citibank is aiming to hire about 415 people from top campuses this year, said Shweta Mehrotra, the chief HR officer at Citi South Asia.

Last year, Vedanta hired 869 engineers, while 96 management trainees from B-schools like IIMs, XLRI, NMIMS, SP Jain have joined this year. This year, it is looking at hiring up to 40 percent more B-school graduates, but a similar number of engineers as last year.

In 2019, Schneider’s campus hiring numbers are likely to be 60-70% more from 2018, said Runita Verma, the HR director for its Indian unit. Schneider visits top B-schools and engineering colleges, but starting this year, it plans to expand its search to more institutions.

Industry and human resource experts said techies would be more in demand as companies are looking at getting tech talent to drive their digital transformation.

Last year, Dabur recruited 36 graduates while this year it is looking at higher numbers and is visiting new campuses.

“Increase in campus hiring could be nearly 25% higher than the previous year and in line with the business growth. Campus talent has always been crucial as they provide a pool of fresh ideas and new perspective to the business,” said V Krishnan, its executive director-HR.

The local unit of health-tech company Philips recruited 150 employees from campuses in 2018 and this year, it has already taken more than 250 from campuses.

“These campus hires are provided with a virtual training before and post joining through a technical boot camp for software jobs while management hires go through short stints across various teams,” said Armaan Seth, the head of HR, Philips Indian Subcontinent.

Tata Steel plans to hire more than 100 engineering graduates and 70 management post graduates as it did last year.

White goods maker, Whirlpool is visiting campuses like Punjab Engineering College-Chandigarh, NITs, BITS Pilani, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, XLRI, among others. This year, the company is planning to hire 38 from the campuses compared with 22 last year, an about 80% jump, said Sarthak Raychaudhuri, Whirlpool’s vice president-HR for Asia.